482 Music releases the work of creative artists who make music that may resist assignment to a specific style, music that blends or bends conventional categorizations, music that is rooted in the interplay of composition and improvisation, and that finds enjoyment in the exploration of new approaches to traditional genres. We hope you will find something a little unexpected in everything we present.

Mike Reed --
Flesh & Bone
Our first mistake was to trust a stranger...
"...shines its light through a fog of bewilderment and outrage - moving from Mingus-esque miniature arrangements to open-air improvisations to the occasional splash of spoken-word poetry." - The NY Times

Tyshawn Sorey --
Koan +
2 LP reissue with additional material..
"There has been music very roughly comparable to this, with one foot in ultra-minimalism and one in the free-jazz performance tradition... but Mr. Sorey’s Koan music otherwise resists characterization, except as slow and quiet..." - The NY Times

Ayelet Rose Gottlieb --
Shiv'a
For string quartet and percussion, exploring the process of mourning."Gottlieb has brilliantly created art out of despair." - NYC Jazz Record

Mike Reed --
People Places and Things: A New Kind of Dance"...the earthy, driving intelligence... points back to Chicago jazz culture, which sees no contradiction in heady abstraction with a bodily groove." - NY Times"You can always count on Mike Reed to jar your neural network on a per-album basis." - AAJ

Roscoe Mitchell / Mike Reed --
In Pursuit of Magic
Mike Reed and Roscoe Mitchell reunite for two masterful extended improv pieces, recorded live at Constellation Chicago."...an extraordinary duo... I do believe in magic and this is it" - DMG"A definitive recommendation." -Jazz Alchemist

NEWS...

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Out now... in these times of all times: Mike Reed's Flesh & Bone. A life-threatening encounter with a neo-Nazi rally in the Czech Republic became a life-changing moment and unerasable memory, and in the years following, Reed and his band mates shaped thoughts and words into music. The core of the group is Reed's well-known People Places and Things, with additional Chicago support. "Flesh & Bone shines its light through a fog of bewilderment and outrage — moving from Mingus-esque miniature arrangements to open-air improvisations to the occasional splash of spoken-word poetry." (The New York Times)

“Shiv’a was composed following the death of three dear friends in 2007…” writes Ayelet Rose Gottlieb in the liner notes, “… while I was living between three cities - Wellington, New Zealand and its wild birds and great ocean; New York, USA, with its fast pulse, close friends, loud sounds and crammed streets; and Jerusalem, Israel, where my ancestors’ wisdom resides, where the stones hum, where my soul stems from. In the process of dealing with this chain of losses, with my feet off the ground and the earth moving under me, music served, as always, as my anchor… This piece was the pipe through which it moved.“

Shiv’a is composed for string quartet and percussion, exploring the process of mourning. Inspired by Jewish and Buddhist traditions, the piece is performed by a stellar group of improvising musicians: the renowned string quartet known as ETHEL and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi.

“This project is different than my other music,” explains Gottlieb. “Usually I am a vocalist, but Shiv’a is mainly instrumental, composed for a string quartet and percussion.
“My music is a combination of styles: jazz, Arabic and world music, and poetry. All come into the sounds I create.”

Gottlieb is a founding member of John Zorn’s a cappella group Mycale, and has toured and performed with pianist Anat Fort for over ten years. Since moving to Canada in 2012, Ayelet has collaborated with some of Vancouver’s leading improvisational musicians, including guitarist Aram Bajakian and clarinetist Francois Houle.

Shiv’a is released as a limited edition vinyl LP with a digital download that includes a bonus track. Original artwork courtesy Noa Charuvi.

Thanks as always for your support!

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A few quick updates to close out the year…

* About those vinyl releases we promised for this past fall… sometimes it takes a while to get these things right:

Shiv’a, from Ayelet Rose Gottleib (who just added a new member to her family, congratulations!), will now see release on February 5, 2016.

Tyshawn Sorey’s Koan will indeed appear on vinyl, as promised… but we’ve yet to get the perfection we’re hoping for in the test pressings. Hopefully there will be news - maybe a finished record! - by spring.

* If you haven’t yet heard the last two releases of 2015, here is what some people thought:

"...the earthy, driving intelligence of Mr. Reed and his crew points back to Chicago jazz culture, which sees no contradiction in heady abstraction with a bodily groove." - Nate Chinen, The New York Times

-2015 NPR Jazz Critics Poll
-The Best Albums of 2015 - Nate Chinen, The New York Times
-Best Releases of 2015 - Troy Collins, All About Jazz
-The Best Jazz Of 2015 - Stewart Smith, The Quietus

* Best wishes to all in 2016…!

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"A second-generation AACM dream team... The album is packed with classic and little-heard gems from the AACM library... I absolutely loved this record from start to finish." - The Free Jazz Collective

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"Fujiwara has been involved in surprisingly large number of stand-out recordings in the creative jazz scene over the last ten years" - Avant Music News

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Things always seem to slow way down for most during the summer (in fact we are usually busy behind the scenes working on fall releases during the summer). For now, one last song before we (appear to) go…

Congratulations to Tyshawn Sorey who has just been named among the artists awarded a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award. A well-deserved accolade which places him in the company of many elite artists and paves the way for many great things to come.

This is the part where we say that we will be reissuing Tyshawn’s album Koan on vinyl, in September 2015, as a double LP with additional material from some early improv sessions which took place featuring the same Koan trio.

Also in September comes Ayelet Rose Gottlieb’s Shiv’a, also on vinyl with a digital download included. Composed for the string quartet ETHEL and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, and featuring Gottlieb on vocals only on the final track, this seven-movement work is alternately challenging and beautiful. Also features appearances by Anat Fort and Sean Conly.

And at an as-yet undisclosed date this summer: Mike Reed’s People Places & Things: A New Kind of Dance. This will now be the... um, fifth work in the trilogy that originally began with Proliferation in 2008. A New Kind of Dance includes appearances from Matt Shipp and Marquis Hill.

And in case you missed it, April saw the release of After All is Said, the third from Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up, and "one of the most accessible, challenging and inventive recordings of recent vintage" according to All About Jazz.

"The Hook Up features artists who are among the more prominent representatives of new directions in jazz and improvisation. As anticipated, the musicians' synergistic output and cunning narratives yield bountiful fruit." - All About Jazz

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Out now: Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up After All Is Said : "...one of the most accessible, challenging and inventive recordings of recent vintage." (All About Jazz)